The British sociologist of science Harry Collins perhaps put it best. In science laboratories across schools in England, you can find children everywhere measuring the boiling point of water. Why? Everybody knows what the value is. What matters is why one child measures it to be 98, another 96, and another 103, and then how we go about agreeing a result.

Current science A-levels suffer from far too much attention on the measuring, and not enough on the experimental design or interpreting the data. In short, what the experiment shows. It is the latter that makes for an interesting lesson, and which develops young scientists' minds so that they can go on to greater things.

Science practical work, which should be the most motivational and challenging of all, is currently formulaic and, because it takes place in a high-stakes environment, simply does not challenge, interest or help students.

Instead, too often experiments have become a ritualised experience without any discrimination in performance. They don't prepare young people properly for the kind of tasks that they will encounter at university and neither does current practical work stretch them.

In short, they are psychometrically useless, other than as a demonstration that human beings are rather adept at jumping through hoops. The current system of assessing practical work is not fit for purpose.

But future practical science work in new A-levels has the potential to be engaging, requiring not just hands on, but minds on.

A student of physics, or chemistry, or biology, will need to think, and think creatively, about what to control and what to vary, what they are measuring, how accurate their measurements are, and then how they will interpret them.

Students will need to do more practical work, using a wider repertoire of techniques. Knowledge of key concepts in experimental design and wider practical skills, including data handling and analysis, will be assessed in the final examinations, too.

As a result, their knowledge will grow. Students will encounter the same knowledge demands at university – and A-levels need to lay the foundation for university.

The new system is similar to the new Framework for K-12 Science Education in the US in that it identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. It means students gradually deepen their understanding of scientific ideas over time by engaging in real-world practices.

The practical work in the new A-levels covers many of the same bases – concepts of error, experimental design, and analysis and interpretation of data, essentially the kind of knowledge that practical work should develop.

In the present model, practical work can be limited and poorly assessed. In addition, there is so much manipulation that almost everyone ends up not only passing, but scoring highly. That does not strike me as a system that is beneficial to anyone. The result is that practical work can become a ritual rather than an engaging and challenging experience.

Science practical work in the new A-levels holds the promise of implementing a system that makes it more meaningful and more stimulating. Better science education, we can only hope, might lead to more world-class scientists and engineers – an outcome which certainly would be worth counting.

Professor Jonathan Osborne holds the Shriram Family Professor of Science Education endowed chair at Stanford University, California. He was a physics teacher in schools in England for 12 years and for 23 years worked at King's College in London where he was head of department from 2005 to 2008.